Diversity, not magnitude is the biggest balance problem

We can all agree that large scale balance is not good. It's generally accepted that the introduction of scourges and firebrands in PoF was the nail in the coffin for a combat system that was already beginning to break down in HoT when people started to stack Condi revs and condi reapers. Since launch, the community has suggested various changes to curtail the dominance of firebrands and scourges, and a few of these were implemented by the developers. Unfortunately, here we are 1.5 years later and we are still talking more or less about the same problems we had since launch. Despite several consecutive patches nerfing the overall strength of scourges and firebrands, (Sc and FB) they alone will comprise of 85%+ of any seriously organized group.
I believe that the lack of significant progress is due to some fundamental misunderstandings of class dynamics. The problem is not necessarily the magnitude of FB and SC abilities, but rather the relative performance spread across a variety of roles that in HoT could only be fulfilled by one class. Said another way, the meta firebrand is basically the compression of base guardian, Healing tempest, boonshare mesmer, and boon revenant into 1 class. It may not outperform a specialist in each of these areas, but the fact that it can even compete with healing tempest, while out stabbing a core guard, outbooning a mes, out-resistance a rev and on top of that have AoE instant-res, reflections, mass condi removal and also be nigh immortal, is a problem. In summary, the problem is that FB is an alleged jack-of-all trades that can easily outperform specialist. A similar problem exists with the scourge. There is simply no substitute at all for these two classes in any interpretation of the meta.

Say for instance we decide that Firebrand healing is too strong and we decide to completely gut it's healing coefficients. Since we still need consistent stab, condi removal and boons, the firebrand meta will remain in place, and nobody will even consider trying to replace the FB with another class because your comp would then be deficient in at least 2 other major roles. What about buffing other class? We can give massive buffs to tempest healer, but nobody will ever slot them in place of a firebrand because they still cannot compete in other areas such as boon coverage, condi removal, and stab and so overall their a poor substitute. So instead the super-buffed tempest will compete in the remaining 15% of the squad space which means that they are going to be pushing the other outcasted professions like the healing druid, and tablet rev. In summary, the problem is versatility and the overall spread of performance across many roles. So long as the firebrand can reasonably satisfy 2 or more roles, they will always be preferred over the traditional pre-pof classes.

I think the developers have two choices. The first choice is to scale up the versatility of other healers such as tempest, druids and revenants by giving them meaningful ways to simultaneously give stab, more boons (or at least unique buffs like auras), and remove conditions. This way they can realistically compete with the firebrand and commanders can assess the relative advantages of employing each class. If you played GW1 you would be pretty familiar with this concept. If you want massive damage reduction you had a lot of options: Imbagon, Soul Twister, or EMO. All of them could excel at the role, it just came down to tastes and what the player was most comfortable with.

The second choice would be to basically have unprecedented nerfs to the FB tome mechanics that would essentially strip them down to performing 1 or 2 roles. In theory maybe it could work, except that we still need stability (honestly the sheer importance of stability and lack of democratization among classes to access it may be equally perilous as this post), so we would still probably run it anyway. In general I don't really like this approach because if we gutted the FB without lowering everybody's damage we would probably turn into glasswars 2. Another problem is that it really doesn't guarantee any diversity because the other classes also have glaring problems in their design.

6

Comments

It is enough to point this out: While the mode was designed with large-scale (and different-scale) PvP in mind, it was never designed around having 1% lead a disorganized 99% as is quite close to the truth now. These are issues only from such a perspective and such a perspective is not sustainable for the game mode anyway so suggesting that to be a focus point in balancing is quite pointless.

Most builds have functional roles, if your commander can not see that then it is up to you to be the commander or work around the commander to help producing content. Balance discussion is fine, I'm not a "this is only the players' fault" kind of guy, but keep balance discussion to actual balance issues.

Meta also has its role but its intended role was never this all-encompassing, long-term perspective that is being applied when discussed by content-consuming players on these forums. Players who are happy with anonymously following the 1% around but unhappy in their options of doing so.

The solution to these issues is not to shift balancing from actual balance to some coaxed up popularity balance, it is for the developer to stop pushing conflicting PvE perspectives onto the WvW community. That includes both perspectives such as how mentor roles work (with 1% leadership of disorganised groups) in contrast to commander roles in a PvP environment (with competition between squads) as well as general perspectives on class balance (where they can't counter-balance effect based on easy of application in PvE environments). They solve these issues by encouraging the formation of guilds that help shape and reshape the meta based on what actually can be done (as opposed to what is routinely done, or most easily done).

To me, this thread is a PvE perspective on WvW.

A perspective based on making it easier to follow a 1% around rather than help creating content, regardless of scale.

In this whole rant you overlook one rather important thing. Most classes and builds do have their roles. It is just that the general state of the WvW mode has made alot of meta-affecting guilds and players leave, while the developers keep overlooking the guilds that shape the meta and attempt to cater the mode towards players who can only consume the content that exists.

Leaving some glaringly obvious balance issues aside, those are the two majorly impactful factors in all of this. Few players who can make off-meta classes work and few groups left to shape and alter the meta as players are being funneled into the existing meta (along with the "queue on one border" issues that creates). The seemingly good thing from the balance team is that they seem more set on making sure every class as at least one role in the different scales. That is challenging enough for them. What you suggest here does not only force them to consider far more specialisations and roles when balancing but also force them to consider more in-class competition over roles.

The few classes and roles that are in dire straits over actual balance issues (ie., magnitude) are mostly so because of mechanical reasons in relation to PvE content. In most other cases it's a question of using the tools the way they were intended and creating content rather than just being a sulky consumer of others' content under others' expectations. It is actually part of the fun that every class does not have a healing build that copies the Guardian's, even if the Guardian's healing builds are the most coveted and popular.

Either way, balancing around popularity and norms rather than actual balance issues is a really bad idea. If you want to play those classes/roles, just roll them. Every account has at least 5 character slots. Stop trying to turn every build into a popular one because you are too comfortable to pick the right tool for the job you want (or for shaping the tool of your choice into something useful).

I'm not sure if I am being too abstract here (or if I come off as unecessarily grumpy, but all these sour meta threads are really starting to take their toll). Perhaps the best way to make it a little more concrete is to provide an example. While not a healing build, the perhaps most discussed build/role recently is the Staff DD. Some say it's in meta and some say it isn't, depending on how one would define meta. It isn't meta because in the hands of an isolated or inexperienced player it is hard to make it useful in a larger-scale group. At the same time it is meta because it is an incredibly powerful tool in the hands of a good player, used in the right way, with the right kind of support. It is the most easily understood example, but it is my argument for all kinds of useful off-meta builds (including Druids and Centaur Revs).

They can be made useful, if not by your tag, then at least by you and your friends. The mode needs the "you" and the "friends" to flourish. The zealous, long-term focus on tag-following, content-consuming meta is part of the problems in the game mode. That meta exists is not an issue, the way it is interpreted and used now is an issue. It is the perspective on meta by existing tags and non-tags, not the perspective of potential tags or new tags. We did not have these issues in the past, before the squads or in the early days of squads when premade parties were mostly allowed to do their thing. Some still do that.

I could probably have said this way shorter, I'm just noting my thoughts down as I go at the moment.

This thread would be true in the first month of PoF when scourges could spam barriers to everyone and faceroll while firebrands would grant perma aegis and stab.

If you have 85% of squad as fb+scourge in current patch, you're doing something wrong. That group could easily be wiped by a group of 15 heralds and weavers clouding around them. At most you'd want 50% of fb+scourge since scrapper and herald are just too strong to pass on. FB is currently inferior to every non-druid healer in healing output and inferior to tempest, warrior and especially scrapper in condi cleansing. Right now you use fb to spam aegis, stab (with some other random boons) and reflects because no other class can do those. You can win fights without even using f2 just because heals on scrapper/tempest/rev are way too strong and easily accessible. If you're smart enough you'd use quickness on firebrands because cleansing in scrapper meta isnt even a good choice because condi conversion is much more effective than condi cleansing and there's no reason not to run at least 5 scrappers per squad.

The problem of scourge is that it's the only class that can reliably remove boons from range and it's the only class that can corrupt boons to begin with. You can nerf its utility and damage to the ground and it will still be needed because of boon removal. The only "fix" to scourge stacking would be introduction of new rev/mesmer/thief elite spec focused on corrupts since they already have some boon removal potential. Nerfing scourge's boon corrupting potential is a very bad idea if fb/scrapper boon spam doesnt get majorly nerfed.

Tempest and renegade are more than viable healers right now, but considering that scrapper has pretty much the same healing output and brings massive condi conversion means that you can play even without them. Perma chill from frost aura is definitely not fun to play against and the sheer amount of heals and condi cleanses on tempest is enough to keep it viable, especially if your group lacks scrappers (but it's never bad to have few tempests regardless). A few renegades in squad can easily keep perma alacrity on almost everyone on top of other utility from mallyx/jalis or even extra dps spike from kalla elite. Powercreeping those 2 specs wont lead to anything good because they are already extremely strong in their field. Healing from herald is already too disgusting and it's part of meta as dps anyway so there's no point of even talking about it. Druid kit doesnt even fit wvw, but soulbeast has huge potential with stances, although they last too short. Ranger's main issue is that its weapon skills are quite bad for large scale so that would be the first step in making it viable.

While boon removal has only one dedicated build, supporting is spread around on multiple classes. In order to make more supports viable FB needs massive reduction on stab/aegis application, mesmer needs its boon spam back (but not in form of every single boon in game), scrapper needs condi conversion either on internal cooldown or completely removed. From that point you can start adding some boons to ranger, soulbeast, renegade and tempest so we can see some alternatives to group composition rather than support stacking. Rev/tempest shouldnt be hard to balance since their role is based on legend/attunement (so tempest couldnt be able to spam permanent might, regen, stability, protection, swiftness etc on all people, it would have to choose what they want to spec in; rev cant focus on damage reduction, condi denial, boon spam, heals etc at once, it has to choose 2 of those). In order to make better balance you need to nerf classes who can do multiple roles at once, and not by reducing their numbers - it's their roles that need to be gutted.

This OP feels like something from long ago. If you're running 85% FB/Scourge then you are doing something very wrong. FB healing is...lacking when you look at Scrapper. Scourge damage, while good, cannot hold up to a good Rev bomb. The corrupt is very good, but Scrapper conversion outpaces the placement of conditions. Tempest are viable, you will often see one or more chronos, and the occasional SpB here and there.

Most parties I see lately would be a FB, Scrapper/Tempest, Herald, Scourge, and X; where X is another damage dealer, or SpB.

as far as boons go, they are aware of this problem. it may take a long time but hopefully they will come up with something.

That topic is about pve, mainly, and the boon output of chrono in raids and fractals (where chrono simply was irreplaceable, now it is a meme). They certainly dont take wvw into consideration when tuning boons.

@jul.7602 said:
We can all agree that large scale balance is not good. It's generally accepted that the introduction of scourges and firebrands in PoF was the nail in the coffin for a combat system that was already beginning to break down in HoT when people started to stack Condi revs and condi reapers. Since launch, the community has suggested various changes to curtail the dominance of firebrands and scourges, and a few of these were implemented by the developers. Unfortunately, here we are 1.5 years later and we are still talking more or less about the same problems we had since launch. Despite several consecutive patches nerfing the overall strength of scourges and firebrands, (Sc and FB) they alone will comprise of 85%+ of any seriously organized group.
I believe that the lack of significant progress is due to some fundamental misunderstandings of class dynamics. The problem is not necessarily the magnitude of FB and SC abilities, but rather the relative performance spread across a variety of roles that in HoT could only be fulfilled by one class. Said another way, the meta firebrand is basically the compression of base guardian, Healing tempest, boonshare mesmer, and boon revenant into 1 class. It may not outperform a specialist in each of these areas, but the fact that it can even compete with healing tempest, while out stabbing a core guard, outbooning a mes, out-resistance a rev and on top of that have AoE instant-res, reflections, mass condi removal and also be nigh immortal, is a problem. In summary, the problem is that FB is an alleged jack-of-all trades that can easily outperform specialist. A similar problem exists with the scourge. There is simply no substitute at all for these two classes in any interpretation of the meta.

Say for instance we decide that Firebrand healing is too strong and we decide to completely gut it's healing coefficients. Since we still need consistent stab, condi removal and boons, the firebrand meta will remain in place, and nobody will even consider trying to replace the FB with another class because your comp would then be deficient in at least 2 other major roles. What about buffing other class? We can give massive buffs to tempest healer, but nobody will ever slot them in place of a firebrand because they still cannot compete in other areas such as boon coverage, condi removal, and stab and so overall their a poor substitute. So instead the super-buffed tempest will compete in the remaining 15% of the squad space which means that they are going to be pushing the other outcasted professions like the healing druid, and tablet rev. In summary, the problem is versatility and the overall spread of performance across many roles. So long as the firebrand can reasonably satisfy 2 or more roles, they will always be preferred over the traditional pre-pof classes.

I think the developers have two choices. The first choice is to scale up the versatility of other healers such as tempest, druids and revenants by giving them meaningful ways to simultaneously give stab, more boons (or at least unique buffs like auras), and remove conditions. This way they can realistically compete with the firebrand and commanders can assess the relative advantages of employing each class. If you played GW1 you would be pretty familiar with this concept. If you want massive damage reduction you had a lot of options: Imbagon, Soul Twister, or EMO. All of them could excel at the role, it just came down to tastes and what the player was most comfortable with.

The second choice would be to basically have unprecedented nerfs to the FB tome mechanics that would essentially strip them down to performing 1 or 2 roles. In theory maybe it could work, except that we still need stability (honestly the sheer importance of stability and lack of democratization among classes to access it may be equally perilous as this post), so we would still probably run it anyway. In general I don't really like this approach because if we gutted the FB without lowering everybody's damage we would probably turn into glasswars 2. Another problem is that it really doesn't guarantee any diversity because the other classes also have glaring problems in their design.

Healscrapper is a meta thing, with super speed and insane condi remobal and healing output. Support tempest was buffed. Firebrands dont take condiremoval mantras anymore, leaving space for other utilities. As long as firebrand has stability, it will always be sought after. And i dont understand why EVERY support class has to do the same things. Tempest has auras, reve has alacrity and massive heals (hard to pull off), druid is a meme in 50 vs 50. Its a meme in pve too, after Spirit rework, people say.

as far as boons go, they are aware of this problem. it may take a long time but hopefully they will come up with something.

That topic is about pve, mainly, and the boon output of chrono in raids and fractals (where chrono simply was irreplaceable, now it is a meme). They certainly dont take wvw into consideration when tuning boons.

oh lol. well maybe the pve balance will spill over into wvw a bit idk.

One thing that still amazes me when I watch ppl streaming zerging is how they never have an enemy targetted. A pvp fight system where you never even have to target another player just seems so.. weird. I'd prefer to see less gtAoe and more pbAoe. If you're going to blow 5 people up you should at least have to target one of them.
Also annoys the kitten out of me when I zerg and my party insists on having the pin targetted when I want to have that sneaky off to the side dude marked so I can keep an eye on them better, or have enemy pin marked to easier see their movement and where I shouldn't be going.

@Celsith.2753 said:
One thing that still amazes me when I watch ppl streaming zerging is how they never have an enemy targetted. A pvp fight system where you never even have to target another player just seems so.. weird. I'd prefer to see less gtAoe and more pbAoe. If you're going to blow 5 people up you should at least have to target one of them.
Also annoys the kitten out of me when I zerg and my party insists on having the pin targetted when I want to have that sneaky off to the side dude marked so I can keep an eye on them better, or have enemy pin marked to easier see their movement and where I shouldn't be going.

A good rev/ele would and should do this often because they are the ones creating downs from high range. Scourge should only target spellbreakers casting winds to insta corrupt it because everything else will almost certainly die to axe+focus burst so there's no need for calling targets. The rest are supports who could mark allies when they get low on hp/go down, but they can usually do that part solo so there's no reason for target calling.

Any decent guild or roamer will know how to manage targets and most of gw2 streamers sadly arent that decent.

@Celsith.2753 said:
One thing that still amazes me when I watch ppl streaming zerging is how they never have an enemy targetted. A pvp fight system where you never even have to target another player just seems so.. weird. I'd prefer to see less gtAoe and more pbAoe. If you're going to blow 5 people up you should at least have to target one of them.

LOL yea. And in many situations you cannot see where the ground was targeted.

@jul.7602 said:
We can all agree that large scale balance is not good. It's generally accepted that the introduction of scourges and firebrands in PoF was the nail in the coffin for a combat system that was already beginning to break down in HoT when people started to stack Condi revs and condi reapers. Since launch, the community has suggested various changes to curtail the dominance of firebrands and scourges, and a few of these were implemented by the developers. Unfortunately, here we are 1.5 years later and we are still talking more or less about the same problems we had since launch. Despite several consecutive patches nerfing the overall strength of scourges and firebrands, (Sc and FB) they alone will comprise of 85%+ of any seriously organized group.
I believe that the lack of significant progress is due to some fundamental misunderstandings of class dynamics. The problem is not necessarily the magnitude of FB and SC abilities, but rather the relative performance spread across a variety of roles that in HoT could only be fulfilled by one class. Said another way, the meta firebrand is basically the compression of base guardian, Healing tempest, boonshare mesmer, and boon revenant into 1 class. It may not outperform a specialist in each of these areas, but the fact that it can even compete with healing tempest, while out stabbing a core guard, outbooning a mes, out-resistance a rev and on top of that have AoE instant-res, reflections, mass condi removal and also be nigh immortal, is a problem. In summary, the problem is that FB is an alleged jack-of-all trades that can easily outperform specialist. A similar problem exists with the scourge. There is simply no substitute at all for these two classes in any interpretation of the meta.

Say for instance we decide that Firebrand healing is too strong and we decide to completely gut it's healing coefficients. Since we still need consistent stab, condi removal and boons, the firebrand meta will remain in place, and nobody will even consider trying to replace the FB with another class because your comp would then be deficient in at least 2 other major roles. What about buffing other class? We can give massive buffs to tempest healer, but nobody will ever slot them in place of a firebrand because they still cannot compete in other areas such as boon coverage, condi removal, and stab and so overall their a poor substitute. So instead the super-buffed tempest will compete in the remaining 15% of the squad space which means that they are going to be pushing the other outcasted professions like the healing druid, and tablet rev. In summary, the problem is versatility and the overall spread of performance across many roles. So long as the firebrand can reasonably satisfy 2 or more roles, they will always be preferred over the traditional pre-pof classes.

I think the developers have two choices. The first choice is to scale up the versatility of other healers such as tempest, druids and revenants by giving them meaningful ways to simultaneously give stab, more boons (or at least unique buffs like auras), and remove conditions. This way they can realistically compete with the firebrand and commanders can assess the relative advantages of employing each class. If you played GW1 you would be pretty familiar with this concept. If you want massive damage reduction you had a lot of options: Imbagon, Soul Twister, or EMO. All of them could excel at the role, it just came down to tastes and what the player was most comfortable with.

The second choice would be to basically have unprecedented nerfs to the FB tome mechanics that would essentially strip them down to performing 1 or 2 roles. In theory maybe it could work, except that we still need stability (honestly the sheer importance of stability and lack of democratization among classes to access it may be equally perilous as this post), so we would still probably run it anyway. In general I don't really like this approach because if we gutted the FB without lowering everybody's damage we would probably turn into glasswars 2. Another problem is that it really doesn't guarantee any diversity because the other classes also have glaring problems in their design.

i dont think u need more than 1Fb and 1 scourge per party in a fully optimized fighting squad, call me crazy but SB with the faster ticking mobile bubble, is back on the meta, after the nerf to shades speelbreaker can strip boons completely faster than scourges can and not only that but the scrapper being on the meta since stea;th+superspeed+outstanding cleasing/condition converting potential further makes corruptions less viable compared to raw strips since scrapers can just turn the corrupted boons back into boons again, and yeah revenant is the king of WvW damage, there is also weaver and tempests that can work pretty well for damage or heals, and mesmer is still the king of CC lockdowns and whatnot. There is plenty of diversity in the current meta, more than ever before in fact, if your group is doing more than 1FB or 1 Scourge per party in the current year, your group is probably not very good tbh

projectiles are useless, as squads can keep 100% bubble or projectile nullification uptime

conditions are useless, as squads can cleanse/convert far more than opposing squads can apply/corrupt

single-target damage is useless (except for extreme pin-sniping, but that is frowned on). You'd rather spend your skills to deal high damage damage to 5 players than 1

Some classes and builds fit work with this meta better than others, so they get played and others don't. Eg. Pew Pew Ranger doesn't work because it's projectile and single-target. Hammer Revenant does work because it's non-projectile and multi-target.

@Kaiser.9873 said:
This OP feels like something from long ago. If you're running 85% FB/Scourge then you are doing something very wrong. FB healing is...lacking when you look at Scrapper. Scourge damage, while good, cannot hold up to a good Rev bomb. The corrupt is very good, but Scrapper conversion outpaces the placement of conditions. Tempest are viable, you will often see one or more chronos, and the occasional SpB here and there.

Most parties I see lately would be a FB, Scrapper/Tempest, Herald, Scourge, and X; where X is another damage dealer, or SpB.

But WHEN was this opinion formed? And at what scale fights are we talking? WvW team comps are vexingly similar to Raid team comps, in that it leans heavily on force multiplication rather then distinct functions. Magnitude is the metric here, since prior to multiple nerfs, a Firebrand could realistically sustain a group of 5 by itself, because it had everything it needed to mitigate incoming threats to the damage builds. That is a huge departure from WvW's original meta, which focused heavily on trading between personal sustain and personal damage; yet still results in the same basic metric of aggregate Damage vs damage mitigation. In fact a lot of previous metas revolved around the Guardian for this very reason, because they're entire kit design is made to reduce/negate incoming pressure. The modern meta mimics raid comps, where a support props up DPS builds, and the DPS dedicate almost entirely to min/maxing damage or shutdown potential.

The issue I have with your argument is that you view it as a Rock Paper Scissors situation, which it looks like on paper due to how the meta "thinks".... but in practice an All FB/Scg comp can realistically work, and whose odds increase substantially the larger the group size. And it can do this, because all they need to do mitigate the spike damage, after which the DPS builds threat levels fall off substantially. I've seen a guild group of ~20 (almost entirely Scg/FB, with 3 Mesmers mixed in) outsustain a Bomb heavy comp from a zerg group twice their size..... and wiped out the opposition in a 3 minute long fight, losing only 1 person in the process. This was roughly a month ago.

Consider the following..... in a game driven very heavily on number thresholds, you can bypass entire mechanics by having an opposing value too big for the mechanic to address. To which the Dev's response is usually converting to a hard mechanic, which outright ignores an opposing value for that very reason. Aggregate defense has an upper limit.... aggregate damage does not. So while you would think that supports the idea of more damage being better, one simple fact flips it on its head...... the 5 target cap. Aggregate damage doesn't have an upper limit, but personal damage does. Thats how that guild was winning. Every member in the comp is both damage and sustain; and while they're DPS output was moderate, its pressure was constant. Death by a thousands cuts, from a small blob that could eat any damage you threw at it.

as far as boons go, they are aware of this problem. it may take a long time but hopefully they will come up with something.

They bringed that issue to themselves, by making everything boon boon boon, while make classes eye candy and feel of being wanted, so players could have a feel that new specs would give them a supper gimmick that they could be carried, so they could sell the expections...
Wich ended in lots of classes aplying lots of boon to left and right with everything else...

They will never fix it.... its an utopia, game is ment to overstack boons 100% of the time the more classes have more boons its a design needed for every spec introduced, and what builds metas are with fast damage at mixture.

@coro.3176 said:
Diversity problems in WvW arise from the mechanics of large fights:

projectiles are useless, as squads can keep 100% bubble or projectile nullification uptime

conditions are useless, as squads can cleanse/convert far more than opposing squads can apply/corrupt

single-target damage is useless (except for extreme pin-sniping, but that is frowned on). You'd rather spend your skills to deal high damage damage to 5 players than 1

Some classes and builds fit work with this meta better than others, so they get played and others don't. Eg. Pew Pew Ranger doesn't work because it's projectile and single-target. Hammer Revenant does work because it's non-projectile and multi-target.

That's lack of iteration and being careless in a "dont care way" when designing the skills.... simple...
Reason i always felt we need much much less aoe stuff but better aoe stuff to avoid stacking , key skills for aoe could even have its cap increased, Anet remove from alot of skils but would design larger and better AOE's that also would have to be dropped cleverly on targets, what we have here atm is pure lameness to please plebs... wich leaded to the single shot class is useless besides roaming, since i can cause more damag eto 5 or more players.....

@coro.3176 said:
Diversity problems in WvW arise from the mechanics of large fights:

projectiles are useless, as squads can keep 100% bubble or projectile nullification uptime

conditions are useless, as squads can cleanse/convert far more than opposing squads can apply/corrupt

single-target damage is useless (except for extreme pin-sniping, but that is frowned on). You'd rather spend your skills to deal high damage damage to 5 players than 1

Some classes and builds fit work with this meta better than others, so they get played and others don't. Eg. Pew Pew Ranger doesn't work because it's projectile and single-target. Hammer Revenant does work because it's non-projectile and multi-target.

Hammer 1 is a projectile, and is bad enough that no one that runs in our guild ever uses the #1 as we name and shame.
Projectile hate is a major issue right now. Very high uptime reflect can be a really nasty problem. Unless you're the FB putting up bubbles that is. Pewpew Ranger has never been meta, and even with less projectile hate wouldn't become meta (some builds would work okay, but wouldn't bring enough extra)
Condis are less than they were, and are not equal to power atm by a long shot. They still work well on those that get too far from pin, but yeah not exactly something most will want to run.